Bush: Innerspring imports issue worth raising
By David Perry -- Furniture Today, April 18, 2004
WASHINGTON — Despite losing an attempt to impose higher tariffs on Chinese-made innersprings, an American innerspring group made progress in raising awareness of that key issue.
That's the assessment of Jimmy Bush, the Hickory Springs executive who is serving as president of American Innerspring Manufacturers, the trade group representing the country's largest innerspring producers.
Bush said AIM will continue to monitor imports of Chinese innersprings.
"We are diligently tracking what is going on and we will take future action if and when it is needed," he said.
The U.S. International Trade Commission recently determined the U.S. innerspring industry is not being injured or threatened with injury by imports of Chinese-made innersprings.
The determination ends, for now, an attempt by AIM to impose higher tariffs on innersprings from China. But Bush said AIM can bring the issue up again.
The ITC determined that Chinese innersprings "are not being imported into the United States in such increased quantities or under such conditions as to cause or threaten to cause market disruption to the domestic producers of like or directly competitive products," it said.
AIM filed a safeguard petition with the ITC in January 2004, saying its members were "very concerned about rising innerspring imports from China and the damage they are causing U.S. manufacturers of innersprings."
Bush said the petition sent an important message.
"What we were trying to do was to lay some groundwork and let the ITC know we have a serious issue and a serious threat," he said.
The petition was "well received" by the ITC, he said. "The ITC basically said, 'Not now'."
One of the ITC commissioners said he was concerned the AIM petition was "premature."
Standing up to the threat
Bush said it is critical the bedding industry stand up to the threat of Chinese innerspring imports.
"We saw what happened in the case goods and leather categories and we decided to act sooner rather than when it was too late," he said.
The petition begins an education process that will continue, Bush said.
U.S. innerspring producers contended the Chinese innerspring imports, while relatively small, are growing rapidly and are affecting innerspring pricing.
They also said it is time to address this issue now rather than waiting until the Chinese spring producers have made major inroads into the U.S. market.
The producers also noted that it is difficult to track accurately imports of innersprings.
Some shipments may be misclassified and thus avoid the current 6% duty, the producers said. AIM's petition sought to impose additional duties of about 40%.
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Innerspring import tariffs nixed
Mar 28, 2004
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